


A Crisis In Your Eyes Again

by Eisenschrott



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Polyamory, Self-Harm, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 15:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11210574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisenschrott/pseuds/Eisenschrott
Summary: The war is over, and Max Veers is home with his two significant others. It feels too good to be true.





	A Crisis In Your Eyes Again

Max didn’t know when he’d woken up. He knew he’d been sleeping because he was lying on his back in his bed, eyes open wide and staring at the dimly lit ceiling, nightmares rumbling somewhere at the vanishing point in his mind. Squawks of seabirds rang outside in the distance. He rolled his head on the pillow to look at the window; it was shut except for a few centimetres at the bottom that let the blinding daylight in.

The window was a window, not a viewport. So he mustn’t be in space. Then he recognised the birdsong, the details of the bedroom: Denon, home. The blankets he was naked under were a tangle on his half of the bed, but pulled smooth on the unoccupied half. Scents of sex, cigarette smoke, and sweat that wasn’t his lingered in the fabric and on the pillows.

He sat his aching body up on the bed and scanned himself in the half-light. No fresh injuries. The pains faded under his scrutiny and even his scars paled.

A folded pair of pants was waiting for him on the bedside table, next to a box of pills with a holotag that read: _Eat one_ ☺. He ignored the pills and put the pants on. There was a housecoat his size hanging from the rack near the door. Eliana had bought it for him during one of his early shore leaves. He’d never worn it enough to wear it out.

After one last, quietly incredulous glance at the bedroom, he opened the door and prowled into the corridor, squinting through the sunlit house towards the living room. The table with the HoloNet viewer, the couch and cushions, the curtains drifting in the morning breeze from the half-open window, emerged from the light like planets accreting in the shapeless swirls of a solar nebula.

He heard a din of cutlery in the kitchen and the chime of the caf machine. His heart started pounding, and it struck him how real that felt. Still careful not to make noise as he walked, he peeked into the kitchen doorway.

Firmus sat at the table, garbed in his impeccable uniform but missing the gloves, cap, and boots; the slippers on his feet were Eliana’s.

“More sugar for me, please,” he said. “Ah, Max! Good morning.”

Max didn’t answer. He watched his wife by the countertop, standing in front of the caf machine with a cup in each hand, wearing a blue summer dress and bed hair pulled back in a messy bun.

She was already smiling and the smile tinged with gentle mockery. “It was your turn to make breakfast today, Maxie, you know?”

“Was... was it?”

“You slept like a carbonite block, though,” Firmus said, “and we didn’t have the heart to wake you up.” Firmus took the caf cup Eliana handed to him, and she bent over to brush a kiss on his lips. Max could see inside the neckline of Eliana’s dress; her breasts were suntanned and covered in hickeys.

“I’m sorry,” Max said.

“It’s fine. But well, you’re just in time,” Eliana turned to him, “for cutting the cake, if you don’t mind.” She nodded at the quinberry cake on the countertop.

“Yes, sure.”

She sat down next to Firmus at the table. Max breathed in her smell and that of freshly ground caf as he passed. For a fleeting moment, he wanted to plunge his face into her dress and wanted it so badly, so physically, that pain shot through his whole body. Especially his right leg, for some reason. His steps faltered and his pants fitted a bit tighter.

Firmus stretched out an arm and pinched his arse.

Max huffed. “Sailor, didn’t you have your fill of it last night?” He realised after asking that the question was neither rhetoric nor ironic. He didn’t remember last night.

“Tut-tut. I had my fill of _this_ last night.” Firmus’ hand slid to the front artillery.

Max blinked, trying to gather his own memories.

“Guys, please,” said Eliana, blowing steam off her caf cup, “we can have another round later. Now I’m starving!”

Firmus let go of Max and sat up straight on the chair, palming and soaking up the warmth of his cup like he often did up in the vac on the _Executor_ , with his triple caf or his rum-fortified tea. “Oh, have we tired you out that much? You need to work on your stamina, dear.”

They nattered on, smiling at each other. Max didn’t want to look away from them, but he was used to forcing himself to do things he didn’t want, so he turned, retrieved three plates and a knife from a drawer, placed the plates on the countertop and cut the first slice of cake. A hint of yeastiness, then an overwhelming berry sweetness.

He cut the second slice much slower. The blade sank centimetre by centimetre, and he sensed the soft resistance of the dough and its core of fruit jam, crunchy with the seeds that always remained in the jam when it wasn’t factory-processed. In the army he’d gone for so many years without eating homemade quinberry jam.

Was he still in the army? Was there still an army?

The blade clinked against the platter. Max stared at the cake, his mind blank, his hands white with cleanliness and covered in calluses and small scars as usual. The longer he stared at them, the more disembodied they seemed.

“Has that cake gotten hold of a vibroblade,” Firmus groaned, “and fighting you back?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Max slipped the slice onto the plate and pulled closer the last empty one. An automatic simple gesture, like pulling a blaster trigger. His hands deftly performed the movements, and the rest of him floated, watched from a distance. The knife spun on his palm, once, twice. A trick he did to look cool when he was a cadet. He remembered that. But he didn’t remember last night. Had last night been real? Firmus, Eliana...?

His fist clamped around the knife. The sharp of the blade rested on his open left palm. It pressed and carved into the flesh.

It wasn’t the first cut he’d received, but it hurt like a Huttfucker. Max yelped and winced. His knees banged against the cupboard, the knife clattered somewhere on the countertop.

“Maxie, what’s wrong?”

Blood trickled onto the platter, mixing in pools with the sugar powder. A hand gripped his shoulder; he could tell by the hold it wasn’t Firmus’.

Eliana pushed him to turn around. Horror flashed on her face, and Max stuttered an apology, but her expression hardened at once. “Fir, the first aid stuff, in the bathroom.”

“I’m on it.” Firmus darted out of the kitchen.

“Hold your hand up.” Eliana yanked a piece of kitchen towel, wetted it under the water tap and dabbed it over Max’s palm, wiping crumbs out of the wound.

“I... the cake, it’s ruined—I’m so sorry.”

“Did you take your meds? The pills in the box. I left them near the bed.”

Max shook his head.

“Fir! Bring Max’s meds too!”

“Yes!” Firmus cried back from the other end of the flat.

“Does it hurt?” Eliana asked.

“Yes. Thank the stars.”

“Why?”

“It hurts, so it must be real.” Max waved his other hand into the sunlight. “All of this. You, and Firmus.”

“Oh, Maxie. Is it that poodoo about Fir and I being dead again?”

Max tried his strained best to laugh. “He shouldn’t be teaching you Huttese.”

“You can punish me later if you want,” Firmus trotted up to them with a bacta patch, “but let me fix you first.”

Eliana removed the bloodstained towel and Firmus sealed the patch over the cut. Max’s nostrils flared as the wound stung upon contact with the bacta.

“And don’t forget this.” Firmus held up a white pill.

Eliana made to go and fetch a glass of water, but Max grabbed the pill and swallowed it dry.

“The doctor was adamant about it, dear,” Firmus said in a soft voice that was almost out of the admiral’s character, without letting go of Max’s injured hand. “You must not forget the medicines.”

“Why did you cut yourself, Maxie?” asked Eliana.

Max didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to cause her pain—more pain she didn’t deserve and he needed to stop inflicting on her—but the soldier in him responded to the matter-of-factly authority in her tone. “It’s hard to explain. I... I was feeling funny.”

“Funny how? Like you’re living in a dream?”

“Yes. I think. I was afraid this... wasn’t real and you...” He looked her in the eye. Dead in a shuttle accident, years ago, while he was on campaign in the Outer Rim. “And you were...” He shifted his gaze, growing unfocussed, to Firmus. Killed in action over the moon of Endor, scattered to stardust with the _Executor_.

Max shut his eyes and tears spilled out down his cheeks. He hung his head and found the bare crook of Eliana’s neck. His wounded hand nestled between her breasts, against her beating heart, sensing her _aliveness_ at the touch. Max tried to choke back the sobs. Restraint crumbled in a few shaky seconds, the ghost aches mauling him as the weeping lent them a voice. Eliana’s naked arms and Firmus’ synthwool-clad arms braked him as he sagged to the floor.

“We’re here, Maxie. You’re safe with us.”

Yes, they were. Stroking his hair. Whispering in his ears. Planting soft kisses on tear-stricken cheeks. They were here and it was all true. Tangible, real. Max sobbed louder.

“Sentimental old berk.”

Max turned his head enough to allow Firmus to run a hand over his cheek, and dry the minimum of skin needed for a kiss.

“We won’t let anyone or anything harm you,” Firmus said.

A part of Max that lay trapped in the nightmares writhed and shouted, _Then why did you die?_

He held onto them, Eliana on his most wounded side, Firmus on the other, shaking and crying, bleating implorations for them to never leave him, to take him with them, the hurt in his body rising and rising until it was the only real thing left.

He came to his senses lying exhausted on his side, his tongue lolling out of his dry mouth on a steel grid floor. Pain shredded through his right leg and he couldn’t feel his foot at the end.

“Kriffing Imp!”

Max rolled his watery eyes to catch a glimpse of the non-Human who’d hissed at him. The bandage on his calf had acquired a footprint of Theelin hooves.

“Sleep’s for sleeping, you Sith-dicked noisy greyback. So lemme sleep, or...” The Theelin lad pulled his stun-cuffed hands to his neck and made a slitting gesture.

Max nodded groggily and muttered an apology. Uttering the words ripped fresh lines of pain across his parched throat. How long had it been since he’d been given something to drink that wasn’t turbid water? He wanted something stronger than water anyway. How long since the slave ship had left Jakku?

Careful not to trigger the stun restraints, he inched upwards to sit with his back to the wall. There was no day or night cycle in this cargo hold and even the meals (stormtrooper-issue ration bars Max was pretty sure were as much spoils from the battlefield as he was) were distributed at erratic times, but the few dozen sentients held here tended, by herd instinct, to sleep more or less all at the same time. That counted as night cycle.

Max gazed down at his cuffed hands in his lap. The skin was dark with grime and the makeshift bandage on his left palm had fallen off; the thinly-crusted wound there was a testament to why it’s bloody daft to resist your captors by parrying a vibroblade thrust bare-handed.

He tilted his head and wiped the tears streaking his face on his shoulders. The motion caused the stun cuffs to jolt him; the zap wasn’t enough to hurt, but it clouded his mind. Fine, he had no wish to think straight.

During his tenure as a pirate-catcher on Axxila, Firmus used to hunt down slavers among the rest of the scum. Fancy if he came to rescue him now. _I’m here, Firmus. You said you’d never let anyone harm me. I’m here. Help me_.

Max didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep again. He jerked awake in the dream when stormtroopers blasted the cargo hold hatch open and Admiral Piett stormed in alive and blaster pistol in hand, bellowing orders, spotted him and rushed to his side, roaring for a medic team while his nimble fingers picked the lock of the stun cuffs...

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Hoodoo_ by Muse.


End file.
